


Unbelieving

by elwing_alcyone



Category: Death Note
Genre: 5000-10000 Words, Alternate Universe - Dark, Bittersweet, Community: no_true_pair, F/M, Post-Canon, Prison, Rare Pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/elwing_alcyone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: captives that turn to each other for comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unbelieving

In the car, the first question Misa asked was when she'd get to see Light. But she didn't know the driver, and perhaps he didn't understand who she was talking about, because he didn't answer.

When they pulled up, she recognised the building as Light's workplace; though he'd expressly forbidden her to go there, she had been unable to resist seeing the place where he spent all his time. It looked such a drab sort of building that she really felt sorry for him, but in a way she was comforted; she was quite sure no one would ever choose to spend their days in a place like this if they didn't have something really important to do there. She had been a little worried about Light being away so much, especially with that Takada woman hanging around, but this was no place for romance to blossom.

The driver got out of the car and came round to open her door for her. He was very quiet, very professional. She wondered who he worked for. Perhaps he was a butler. If the case was over, Light could afford someone like that.

'Where's Mogi?' she asked. 'I haven't seen him for ages. Is he in another car?'

No reply. The man she supposed was a butler joined another stranger, this one incredibly muscular, and they flanked her as they entered the building.

'What a lot of security!' Misa exclaimed. 'I thought it was over! Are we still in danger?'

'Can't be too careful,' the new man grunted. Misa was reassured by this; she didn't really like people who never spoke at all.

'Of course, you're right!' she chirped. Honestly, she was a bit annoyed that Light wasn't here to greet her, but it was no good being sulky. 'Where's Light?'

'He's here.'

'Oh, good. Wait! I can't see him in these clothes, I've been wearing them since New Year's eve! Can I get changed first?'

The men exchanged a glance over her head. The butler type shrugged. The one on the right said, 'I don't see why not. You!' He called out to yet another burly man a little way down the hall. 'Find some clothes for Amane.'

Misa was relieved. 'Oh, thank you. Misa-Misa always wants to look good for Light. Is there somewhere private I can get changed? An idol has to be careful about that sort of thing. Not that Misa expects you to peep, of course, you seem like a real gentleman.' She grinned up at him, hoping to draw a smile, but he didn't even look at her.

'There's a room in the basement,' he said.

As they waited for the lift, the third man brought a carrier bag that she supposed must have her clothes in. She wondered doubtfully what they could have found for her to wear at such short notice.

'Wow,' she said. 'You must have had my clothes brought from my apartment before I even got here. You're really well-prepared.'

But the elevator arrived just then, and she supposed that was why her bodyguard – was he really a bodyguard, or something else? – didn't reply. The butler left them alone.

In the basement, they followed a maze of increasingly ill-lit and dingy corridors for what felt like a long time. Misa thought it was an awfully long way to go just to find a room she could change in, when there were rooms on either side that looked fine. A horrible possibility occurred to her.

'You do work for Light, don't you? You're not one of Kira's followers?'

'You're a bit behind the times, aren't you?' the man said, grimly amused. 'Things have changed. In here.'

Misa stepped into a white, bare room and took the bag he held out to her. 'I don't understand. Has something happened?'

'I serve Yagami Light,' said the man, 'and Yagami Light is our Lord Kira. Now that he's won, he's given us, his loyal followers, some very specific orders regarding you.'

Misa's head was spinning. It couldn't be. 'What orders?' she said in a small voice.

The man grinned. 'Keep you out of his sight.'

He slammed the door. There was the sound of a key turning in a lock. Misa stood stunned, still holding the plastic bag and staring, just staring, long after he was gone.

*

Misa waited a very long time for somebody to come and explain things to her.

The clothes in the bag were not hers. There were a pair of grey, stretchy trousers, the sort people wore to go jogging, and a dark blue shirt that buttoned down the front. Both were made for a man, and were much too big for Misa, and they weren't even clean. She had been putting the shirt on when she'd caught the musty, sour smell of a man's sweat from the armpits. Putting on a man's ugly clothes was one thing; putting on clothes that somebody else had _worn_ and left his smell on, that made her skin crawl. She didn't even touch the trousers. The clothes went in a heap on the floor, and she kept on her own outfit. It wasn't fresh, and she was sick of wearing it, but it had been laundered, at least, and it was hers.

The door was definitely locked; she'd tried it several times, not quite able to believe that this was really happening. It looked old and flimsy, but no matter how long she wrestled with it, it wouldn't budge.

With nothing else to do, she thoroughly examined the tiny room she was locked into, and found it discouragingly bare. In the corner there was a toilet that smelled unpleasantly of standing water, though nothing worse than that. Misa still didn't want to go near it. There was no sink to wash her hands in, just a cold tap sticking out of the wall with a drain underneath.

The floor itself was concrete, painted grey, but with patches where an older coat of green paint showed through. The walls were brick, painted white. There was a metal-framed bed with a damp-smelling mattress, a flat pillow and one faded blanket: no sheets. There was a tiny desk with one drawer in it, empty, that looked as though it had been left here a long time ago and forgotten about. Illumination came from a strip-light on the ceiling, and the switch was near the door so Misa could at least turn it on and off when she wanted.

There was nothing else. No toothbrush, no hairbrush, no soap. Nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to play. Nothing beautiful or interesting, nothing to distract the eye. It was just...

_Barren,_ she thought miserably. Inhospitable to life. Unless you counted the patch of mould around the drain.

The only interesting thing was that the wall beside the bed was not really a wall, but a sort of heavy sliding panel that ran along a groove in the floor and ceiling and was chained to three eyelets in the wall by the door. It rocked when she pushed at it, but the chains were quite sturdy, and there wasn't enough give to break them even if she'd had the strength. There was a gap where the screen met the wall, though, and peering through, she could see a bit of another room with the light on. It looked exactly like hers.

'Is anyone there?' she asked, hopeful. 'Hello? My name is Misa.' But her voice echoed in a very empty way, and she gave up.

There was no way of knowing the time. Nobody came. She knew she ought to be thinking about what the man had said, especially about Light – about Light being Kira – but she didn't want to. She didn't want to think about what it all meant.

Eventually, Misa curled up on the bed, trying to keep close to the edge, where it was cleaner. Her skin itched, and the light was too bright, but she didn't want to turn it off and be in darkness in here, and the floor was too cold to sleep on.

In the end she didn't sleep anyway. Every time she dozed off, she jerked herself awake again. She was unwilling to fall asleep in this place: it felt too much like accepting that she was here for good.

*

The next morning – she supposed it was morning, though she had no way to tell – one of the men who had brought her here the night before came with a bowl of mushy rice and boiled greens. Misa was exhausted, her head throbbing, but nevertheless she jumped from her bed and ran to him with her fiercest look.

'How long are you going to keep me locked up?' she demanded. 'You can't do this. If Light knew I was here – '

He gave her a disdainful look. 'Weren't you listening last night? Lord Kira is the one who ordered me to put you here.'

Misa had managed to convince herself she'd misunderstood that part; she had been shocked, after all. It shook her all over again to hear him say it once more.

'That can't be,' she insisted, though her voice sounded weak to her own ears. 'It must have been that Takada. She hates me. She must have done it behind his back.'

The man advanced on her, his eyebrows drawing together in a very threatening way. 'I never want to hear Miss Takada's name coming out of your whore's mouth again, do you hear me?'

Misa stepped back, alarmed by the unexpected force of his anger. 'I – but – '

'Miss Takada's orders are as good as words from the mouth of Lord Kira to me,' said the man, 'but in this case, he gave the command personally.'

'But why would he do that?' said Misa in a small voice. 'I'm his girlfriend.'

'Apparently he doesn't think so,' said the man. He half-turned away, falling back into his curt professionalism. 'I'm coming back in half an hour for that bowl,' he informed her, 'and I'm taking it whether you've finished eating or not. Don't expect anyone to run around waiting on you any more, understand?'

The door slammed again. Misa was already coming to hate that sound.

She felt weak and shaky, the way she had after that earthquake when she was eleven. Everything she knew about how the world worked was wrong. The ground itself could move, could try to throw her off as if it hated her. Nothing was solid, nothing was safe.

She sank to her knees on the smooth, cold floor. Now everything was too solid. She wanted to bury herself in the cold concrete, but it would not yield to the pressure of her hands. Nothing yielded. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. The world had made itself into a new shape, and the truth she thought she knew was twisted beyond all recognition.

The man came back in half an hour, as he'd said he would, and took the bowl with hardly a glance at her. She hadn't eaten, or moved; she sat on the floor with her fists against the stone, waiting for another earthquake to put things right again.

*

Twice more, the same man brought her meals, and then for a while it was a series of different people, strangers every time. Misa had the sense of great upheavals going on above, rearrangements and purges, but none of it reached her down here. Her cell was always the same.

It happened on the fifth night, according to her best estimate: she heard a door bang open, so loudly that she leaped out of bed, thinking it was her door, but it wasn't; it was the one in the room separated from hers by the sliding panel.

She heard shouting, a jumble of voices echoing from the bare walls and floor so loudly it made her ears ring. She couldn't distinguish any words, but the voices were all male. At last she heard the door close again, and footsteps going away, but that wasn't the end. One male voice kept shouting, words that sounded like spitting out a mouthful of consonants. They weren't Japanese, and they weren't the sort of words you learned in a basic English class, certainly, but she got the idea.

The person in the next room went on a rampage; she heard the clanging of an abused bed, of fists beating against the rattling wooden door, and then the man discovered that the sliding panel moved and made a satisfyingly loud noise as it did, so he took out his fury on that for a while. She was a little afraid of the violence of his anger, and stayed silent in the darkness of her own cell.

Eventually the man's rage was spent, and she heard the bed groan as he sat down on it.

'Fuck,' he said, calmly enough for her to make out the sound, even if she didn't know the word. 'Fuck, fuck, fuck.'

Misa started to relax, and her own bedsprings squealed. The reaction from next door was instantaneous, a stream of English. It sounded like questions, but he spoke too fast for her to understand them.

'Hello?' she called in Japanese. 'Are you a prisoner too?'

A moment's silence, then he spoke, cautiously and clumsily, in the same language. 'Yes, I'm a prisoner.'

Misa sighed, relieved that they could communicate, relieved that he wasn't a lunatic after all. 'Thank goodness,' she said. 'I've been all alone down here. What's your name?'

Again that fractional pause. 'Gevanni,' he said.

She repeated it, carefully shaping her mouth around the unfamiliar sounds. 'Gevanni.'

'And who am I speaking to?'

'My name is Misa.'

'Misa?' She didn't like the sound of his voice when he said it. 'Amane Misa?'

'That's right,' she said. 'Have you heard of me?' She hadn't known she was so famous in America.

'Oh, I've heard of you,' he said grimly. 'You're the second Kira.'

At first, Misa was too surprised to feel much of anything. 'Me?' she said.

'Don't play innocent,' the man said. He was beginning to sound angry again. 'I know exactly who you are, Amane. What is this, are you spying on me? I don't know anything. You can tell them to kill me if they want. There's nothing to learn from me.'

His Japanese accent wasn't so good now that he was getting emotional, and Misa had trouble understanding him.

'What? Please, don't be upset with me. I'm not the second Kira. I don't know why you – '

He laughed again, mockingly. 'This is a joke,' he said. 'This is too goddamn perfect. Listen, Amane, you don't bother me and I won't bother you, all right?'

She sat back, hurt. 'But I'm not – '

'I'm getting close to losing my temper again,' he said in a warning tone. She knew there was nothing he could do to her as long as they were separated by the sliding wall – he couldn't break it down, she was sure – but she didn't want him to start banging things again.

'Okay,' she said softly, and lay back down on her bed. 'Goodnight,' she whispered, but if he heard her, he didn't reply.

*

Twice a day, a thin woman with a mole below her right eye opened the door just long enough to deposit a bowl of food on the floor. Today was instant ramen with chicken, swimming in a thin soup that looked like dishwater and tasted of little but salt, and that faintly. The food was edible; it was the negligence of it that upset Misa. If cooking for someone was a way of showing you loved them, this meal must mean there was nobody left who cared for her. She pressed her lips against the hot china until she thought they must be blistering, but the sting faded quickly enough afterwards. You could feel horribly injured without having been really damaged at all.

When she had eaten, she couldn't resist peeping through the crack into the next room. She couldn't see Gevanni, but his bowl still sat untouched where the woman had left it. She wondered how hungry he was, and felt a stir of compassion for him.

'It's not poisoned,' she said. 'It's safe to eat.'

'Shut your mouth, you murderous bitch,' he said, with hatred that felt like a slap across the face. 'The day I believe a word you say is the day hell freezes over.'

The idiom didn't translate well, but she understood the sentiment clearly enough. She withdrew again, pressing her trembling lips together, and huddled on her bed. She concentrated on putting her lank hair into dozens of thin braids, and by the time she was half done, she was tired enough and calm enough to sleep.

*

Stephen didn't eat the next day, or the day after, but by the fourth day of his captivity, the bowl of soggy noodles looked like a rare delicacy. Its faint, greasy smell was enough to make his stomach ache. Hating himself, he gave in and started to eat.

He wondered about the girl in the next cell – he still thought of her as a girl, though he knew she was not all that much younger than him. They hadn't spoken again since he'd called her a murderous bitch, which was fine by him, but he could hear everything she did quite clearly. She hadn't left her cell; he would have heard the door opening, and her footsteps leaving. He didn't think she wrote notes to the guard; he had heard nothing that sounded like paper or even the plastic of a pen. From the sound of it, she spent her days in much the same way as he did.

It was a long way to go for a man who had no secrets any more, especially for a pampered idol. She was not the obvious choice as a spy, for dozens of reasons. But maybe that was the trick. He wouldn't have put it past them.

He heard the scrape of her bowl on the floor and, curious, put his eye to the crack. He could see her. The first thing he noticed was how very small she looked. On television, she'd looked normal, surrounded by other women of similar build, but in the flesh, she was tiny.

She stood against the door to her cell, resting her forehead against it, pressing her palms on it, as if willing the obstruction to disappear. He heard the sound of her breathing grow rough. Her hair was in little corkscrew springs, like a new perm, but it was greasy, and its real shade was growing in at the roots. Her black skintight shirt and miniskirt were crumpled from being slept in, and she was wearing striped stockings with holes in them. He recognised them: that was the outfit she'd been wearing when the SPK took her into custody, though it was much deteriorated.

She looked the way a prisoner should look.

He drew back. He couldn't afford to feel sorry for her. If she were a spy, this whole thing could be an act, and all else aside, she was still a murderer.

He listened to her breathing turn into ragged gasps, almost sobs. She sniffled once, then it stopped. He heard the bedsprings creak, and silence. There was a tightness in his chest that was nothing to do with the dusty air, and a knot in his stomach that was not hunger.

*

When the female guard returned for Stephen's bowl and found it empty, she smirked. 'There's a good boy.'

Stephen didn't care. He'd come to a decision, and he'd need his strength if he was going to escape.

*

On the ninth day his plans temporarily ran aground. At first, when the chills and bone-deep ache started to take over his body, he thought Kira had finally decided to get rid of him, but by the end of the day he'd dismissed that possibility. There were many more direct ways of killing someone than giving them the flu.

The next few days were miserable. Even getting out of bed for his meals was an effort, and he only bothered because he knew he'd recover more quickly if he ate. The guard wrinkled her nose at the sight of him – he knew he probably looked awful, even without the virus. Next time she came in, she wore a mask, and only touched his bowl with latex gloves on, as if he were victim to some highly infectious form of plague. That, he thought, was uncalled-for.

He used up all his toilet paper blowing his nose, and spent the next night sniffing wretchedly. In the morning, he found a little pile of tissues on the floor, single sheets that Misa had fed through the gap in the wall, one by one.

He gathered them up into his lap and looked at them a moment, then knocked lightly on the wall. His ringing ears and fluttering muscles refused to do anything more than that.

'Misa?'

No answer. He hoped she was listening.

'Thanks,' he said.

*

Misa heard the soft tap on the sliding panel, and heard him say her name. He didn't sound angry, but he was sick and weak, so maybe that meant nothing. She stayed silent.

There was a pause, and then his newly gentle voice said, 'Thanks.'

Misa put her head on her arms and let the tears soak her sleeves.

*

The next morning, on the floor at the bottom of the crack, she found a small plastic comb. She spent the next few hours working the knots out of her hair, and when she was done, although she had no mirror, although she knew her hair was still dirty and oily, she felt almost like herself again.

*

After he was better, he went quiet on her for a while, remembering that a spy would undoubtedly try to earn his trust with acts of kindness. But the days were so long. Perhaps this stalemate made it impossible to learn anything from him – not that he knew anything they'd care to learn – but as long as they were silent, he couldn't find out anything from her, either. If they talked, she might let something slip.

He started it simply enough, by asking for his comb back. When she passed it through, he saw the bitten nails of her hand, and felt that shiver of compassion again. He squashed it, but smiled, and the half of her face he could see smiled back, a little wobbly, but encouraging.

She said, 'Why are you here? What did you do?'

Only natural she'd pretend not to know, but if she was hoping for new information on that score, she was out of luck; he had nothing. 'I worked for Near,' he said.

'Ohh. I never knew anything about that.' She was quiet a moment. 'Where is Near?'

If that was an attempt to get him to own up to something, it was a pathetic one. 'Dead,' said Stephen, wishing it could have been a lie. 'Like the rest of our team. I only lived because I wasn't at Yellow Box.'

'Yellow Box?'

Could this much ignorance really be believed? He wasn't sure. 'Yellow Box Warehouse. The place where Near and Kira met each other. That was where he... where Yagami revealed himself. That was where he won. Did you really not know that?'

'I wasn't there, was I?' She sounded frustrated. 'You should know, it was your group who kidnapped me to keep me out of the way. I didn't know anything until they came and got me from the drop point. I thought I was going home, but they brought me here instead.'

'Why?' he asked. 'If you were the second Kira – '

'I'm not the second Kira!' Her voice rose and gained an edge of hysteria. 'I keep saying it! Why won't anyone believe me? I was just Light's girlfriend. I thought he loved me. He never told me anything – I wouldn't have cared if he was Kira, but he never told me – and then he put me here, and I haven't done anything!'

Her voice broke and she moved away from the gap. He could hear the sound of her crying, but tried to remember that she was an actress.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean to upset you.'

'Why am I here?' she wailed. 'Why would he do this to me? I tried to be a good girlfriend. I did everything I could think of.'

'I'm sorry,' Stephen said again. If he squashed his face up against the wall, he could see the line of her shoulder and the light fluff of blonde hair. 'Misa.'

'Leave me alone,' she said. 'You'll just think I'm lying anyway.'

He sighed and returned to his habitual place on the bed, back against the wall. Her questions had reminded him of the things he didn't want to think about; Near, Yellow Box, the rest of the team. He had been chosen to stay away from the warehouse and take up the fight against Kira, should the SPK lose.

_And how's that going?_ he mocked himself. _Locked in a cell, trying to get information out of an airhead celebrity who only cares that her boyfriend dumped her. And that's assuming she's not just here to spy on me._

He put his hands in his hair, scrubbing at his itchy scalp. He could smell himself. God, he felt disgusting, and there was nothing to distract him.

His fingers worried at the cuff of his shirt, which was already grey with dirt and starting to fray. It was a bad idea; if he damaged this shirt, he didn't expect he'd be given another one. But his hands needed something to do. He home he liked crafting fiddly little ships and putting them in bottles to admire; it was something to do while his brain worked. Now there was nothing, and Misa was chewing her fingernails and Stephen was pulling his clothes apart, thread by thread.

*

Misa was ashamed of herself. She didn't usually cry so much; in fact, she made a specific effort not to. Crying made your face puffy and your makeup smeary, and crying was what girls did to force their men to do things. Misa was better than that. She had trusted Light too much to want to manipulate him.

But since he had betrayed her she seemed on the verge of tears all the time. Gevanni must think she was a weepy little crybaby as well as a murderer. She wanted to tell him he was wrong about her, about all of it, but she couldn't think how.

The prisoners were usually ignored except when the guard brought their meals, so Misa was surprised when she heard the door to Gevanni's side of the cell opening not long after the first meal of the day. She heard the voice of the guard say, 'Get up and come with me.' Her voice was very cold. She'd never said a word to Misa, and had only spoken that once to Gevanni. They'd chosen the iciest woman they could find.

And now she was taking him away somewhere.

Misa jumped off the bed and pressed her eye to the gap. The woman stood with her arms folded.

'Leave now? I was just getting comfortable,' Gevanni said. He tried to speak lightly, but Misa could hear an edge to his voice.

'I said, get up and come with me, scum.'

'I'd like to know where we're going first, if you don't mind.'

'Do not test me,' the guard said flatly. 'They want you alive, but they're not particularly worried about your health while you're with us.'

Misa didn't like the sound of that. She willed Gevanni to stop messing around and do as he was told.

'Has Lord Kira decreed that assault and battery is no longer a crime, then? How convenient. What a civilised world he's building.'

The guard smiled unpleasantly. 'Not for you,' she said. 'You don't exist. Now get up, and come with me.'

Gevanni seemed to decide not to push his luck any longer, and she heard him shuffle to his feet and walk unhurriedly towards the door. She got her first good look at him: a tall man in a rumpled suit, obviously not Japanese, but with black hair, and skin not quite as pale as some of the Americans she'd met.

He was quite good-looking for a foreigner, but not at his best just now, dishevelled and sporting ten days' beard growth. At any rate, he stood straight, making the most of the three or so inches he had on the guard, and his stride was very nearly a strut. Misa liked his fearless defiance, and at the same time it frightened her. She didn't want him to get hurt. Whatever he thought of her, he was the only person she had to talk to in here, and if anything happened to him, she'd be by herself again. And then she would go insane.

At the door he made a show of stretching, and the guard recoiled from him with a look of revulsion. Gevanni tilted his head towards the crack in the wall and saw Misa watching. One of his eyebrows went up, and he seemed to smile wryly, and then he was looking away again before she could react.

'You go first,' the guard said in her hard voice. 'And don't try anything. On second thought, do try something. I want to see the smug look drop off your face when you find out what we'll do to you.'

If Gevanni made a retort to that, Misa didn't hear it. It was lost in the sound of the door slamming, and then the only sound was the two pairs of feet receding down the corridor.

They wanted to see him, but not her. After everything, that shouldn't have hurt her as much as it did. For all she knew, Light had forgotten all about her.

She wasn't going to cry again. She was sick of having a runny nose and a dry mouth and a dull headache. Instead she punched her pillow until her arm ached, and then sat down again to wait. She thought they would bring him back; she hoped they would.

When she closed her eyes, she could see that look he had given her, rueful and amused together. Nobody she knew looked like that. The men were always serious, and the girls were always bubbly.

She tried to teach herself to raise only one eyebrow at once.

When that failed, she sat on the bed again, hugging her knees, and waited.

*

Her evening meal arrived before Gevanni did. The guard's mood appeared as taciturn as ever, so Misa screwed up her courage.

'Where's that man who was in the room next to mine?' she asked.

The guard looked up from the bowl of food she'd been putting down, and smiled coldly. 'Been making friends, have you? How sweet.'

Misa stood up straight and met the woman's eyes, the way Gevanni had done, although he had been taller than the guard, and Misa was somewhat shorter. 'Where is he? What have you done with him?'

'Nothing, yet,' the woman said indifferently. 'He's being questioned. Don't worry, if he's not completely stupid, you'll get him back. For a little while, at least.'

'What do you mean?'

The woman's smile stayed in place, but her eyes grew colder still. 'He's on trial next week,' she said with a note of satisfaction. 'For terrorism and crimes against Kira. He'll get the death penalty, of course.'

'Trial?' said Misa, bewildered. 'But... Kira...'

'Lord Kira is justice. If your friend shows remorse for his crimes and begs forgiveness, Lord Kira will show mercy. If he continues to be perverse, the world will see that Lord Kira has no choice.'

This woman was talking about Light. It was hard to remember that sometimes. But Light was not that kind of person.

The guard was leaving. 'Wait!'

She stopped, looking impatient. 'What is it now?'

'I want to see Light. Please, can I see him?'

The guard regarded her scornfully. 'Really? You'd go before him looking like _that_?'

Misa knew she looked bad, and the idea of Light seeing her like this was so humiliating as to be nearly painful, but if she could see him, if she could look into his eyes, perhaps he'd remember that she had been his Misa all along. Perhaps he'd remember why they had been together all these years.

_And remind me, too,_ a small part of her mind whispered, _because I've forgotten._

'I don't care,' she said humbly. 'I just want to talk to him.'

The woman snorted. 'I shall pass on your request. Lord Kira will see you if he chooses.'

She left Misa to her solitary meal, but Misa could hardly eat it. One moment, her stomach was churning; the next it felt like solid ice.

Light. She might be able to see him. Even if he no longer loved her, even if his eyes were cold and emotionless when he looked at her, even if his voice had no feeling in it and he sent her away, she'd still have one last memory of him, the man she loved as the god of the new world. She could make that suffice.

And if he killed her, she didn't mind that either. Hadn't she always been willing to die for him?

As for Gevanni, she hoped he would be sensible and choose to live. If she had to spend the rest of her life in this cell, or if she died tomorrow, she wanted to know that he would be all right, if only because they had shared this strange, untrusting companionship for a few days.

She put her hand against the rocking panel, imagining that Gevanni was on the other side of it. Whatever became of her, she hoped he would be safe.

*

Stephen didn't really remember returning to his cell. It was all a dizzy sort of haze, and he supposed they must have carried him, but he couldn't be sure.

His head pounded fiercely. That was the first thing he was aware of. The second was Misa's voice, quiet but with a shrill, frantic edge to it, calling his name.

'Gevanni? Are you okay? Are you hurt? Gevanni. Please say something... I know you're there... are you awake? What did they do? Gevanni, Gevanni, Gevanni!'

'Okay, shut up,' he muttered, his tongue stumbling over the foreign words. 'I'm awake. I can hear you, so be quiet now, okay?'

'Oh, thank goodness.' The relief in her voice was touching, and he was in too much pain to bother with suspicion just now. He smiled. That hurt too. 'Did they hurt you badly?'

'Not at first. Then they started getting frustrated and they hit me round the head a few times.'

'Gevanni? I don't...'

He realised he'd been speaking in English. He sighed. 'Not to worry,' he said in Japanese. 'I'm okay. I just need a drink.'

He dragged himself across the room to the tap, and gulped thirstily. Then he gathered water in his hands and splashed it over his face and head. There were some spots so tender that just touching them made his breath hiss, and the water running down to his collar left pink blotches. He winced.

'I saved you some bread from dinner,' said Misa's small voice. 'It's cold now, but I thought you might be hungry.' A thin slice of dry brown toast began to poke through the gap in the wall, and he took it with thanks, although he was too nauseous to want to eat just now.

'What did they want to know?' she asked.

He tried to analyse her question as if she were a spy, but gave up. There was nothing she could find out anyway.

'Just whether I was alone, whether any other SPK members are out there, whether I'm in contact with any other rebels... that sort of thing. I told them the truth: I'm the only one.'

'She said you get a trial next week.'

'Huh?'

'The guard. I asked her, and she said they'll put you on trial.'

Stephen snorted. 'And what a trial it will be, I'm sure. Very fair, very impartial.'

'Listen, though,' said Misa urgently. 'She said that if you pretend you're sorry and beg for forgiveness, Kira will let you live.'

'Well, they can forget it,' Stephen said at once. 'I'm not going to beg him for anything.'

'What?' Misa sounded astonished. 'But they'll kill you!'

'Let them.' His head screamed as he stretched out on his bed and closed his eyes. 'I don't care.'

'But – '

'I can't talk right now,' he interrupted. 'I'm sorry. I'd like to sleep for a while.'

'I – okay.'

She fell silent, and he tried to forget the pain in his head enough to get to sleep. He wondered if they'd done any serious damage, and found he didn't mind if they had. Dying now wouldn't be so bad. They wouldn't be able to use him if he died now.

He thought he heard Misa say she was glad he was alive, that she hoped he'd continue to live, but perhaps it was a dream, because he did dream of her. First as the bright, sweet-faced smiling girl she had been, posing before the cameras, the light shining onto her face. In his dream he was uneasy, because the spotlight was sometimes a searchlight, but she didn't seem to know the difference. He wondered if he should tell her, but he didn't think he'd be able to get close enough.

And then she was the woman she had become, stringy-haired and rumpled in that same short skirt and tights, with ragged nails and a slump to her shoulders and a face ashy without makeup. The spotlight/searchlight was gone; she was in the dark, her head bowed. He went up to her now because they were the only people in this wilderness, and she seemed as lost as him.

They sat together awhile. That was all.

*

The next day, she tried again to convince him to confess and pretend to be sorry, when his trial came, so that he could live.

'Live for what?' he asked.

'Anything,' she said at once. 'Because you can.'

'Misa.' He wished he could take her shoulders and look into her eyes properly, instead of speaking through this thin gap. 'I can't do that. I won't have him make an example of me.'

'You're too proud,' she said in her proud little voice. 'None of that matters now.'

'Yes, it does. He's not going to let me go free, you know.'

'He might.'

'No, he won't. If I let him have this, he'll own me forever. I'll be his little convert to parade about whenever he wants to show what a merciful tyrant he is, and if I don't behave myself he can kill me and say it's all that I deserved. I'd rather go down now and not surrender.'

'He's not that sort of person,' Misa said pleadingly. 'He's not really that bad.'

Stephen leaned his forehead against the screen where she stood on the other side. He thought it felt warmer there.

'Yes,' he said, sadly, smiling. 'Yes, Misa, he is.'

*

The same female guard with the mole under her eye brought Misa her meal and stopped at the door.

'He says yes,' she said tersely. 'He'll see you tomorrow.'

Misa's stomach dropped.

When the guard was gone, Gevanni's quiet voice said from the other side of the wall, 'What was that? Who'll see you?'

'Light,' she whispered. 'I get to see him.'

There was a long silence. 'Don't do this,' Gevanni said at last. 'It's no good. It won't change anything.'

She clenched her fists. 'You don't know that. You don't know. If I can talk to him – '

'Don't,' he said. 'Don't go crawling to him on your knees, you're better than that.'

How strange she'd never thought of it like that. In her head, she was always the wronged woman who'd stand by the man she loved forever, no matter how he disdained her. But when Gevanni said it, it did seem like something shameful. She wished he'd just stayed silent.

'I have to try,' she said.

'Misa, dear God, will you – '

'No,' she said, lifting her head. 'You won't do what I ask you to, so why should I?'

She heard the rising anger in his voice. 'Don't you do this to get back at me.'

'I'm not,' she said. 'I'm doing it because I want to – because I have to.'

'You don't.'

'And you don't have to die,' she snapped.

Stalemate, again.

'Fine,' he said in a hard voice. 'Do what you think is right.'

*

When the guard had taken their empty bowls, Misa stripped off her clothes and bent down under the tap, working her fingers through her hair and trying to get it clean. Without shampoo, she knew, the water wouldn't get the oil out, but it might look a bit less stringy.

She wished she hadn't bitten her nails. Her hands looked awful now, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She could feel Gevanni's righteous anger vibrating through the thin wall, and tried to ignore it, but she didn't want to end on bad terms with him. She rubbed at her hair with the man's shirt they'd given her to wear when she arrived, and put her clothes back on, then went to the gap at the end of the sliding screen.

'Can I borrow the comb?' she asked.

'No,' he snarled.

She sighed. 'Please?'

'So you can pretty yourself up for _him_? No.'

'Gevanni.'

'That isn't my name,' he said roughly, 'so don't think you can use it to bring me round. And you really know how to work on people, don't you? That little-girl act, all cute and innocent, like you need protection. As if.'

'I just wanted the comb,' she said, snapping back for once. 'And I'm not putting on an act. That's my job, and I'm not getting paid just now, am I?'

He said nothing. She set about trying to polish her scuffed boots with water and toilet paper.

*

Stephen kept thinking of things he wanted to say to her, things that would certainly convince her she was in the wrong. In the end, he didn't say any of them, because if she was going to be awkward, so be it. Anyway, probably nothing would convince her. She was stubborn under that fragile facade, especially when it came to Yagami, though God only knew why.

But it was weird, how the image kept coming back to him of her sitting on her bed with her hair drying in tangles. If she went in front of Kira looking like that, she'd look just pitiful enough for them to laugh at her, at how far she'd fallen that she couldn't even comb her hair any more. Beautiful idol Misa-Misa, reduced to that. Yes, reduced, and disgraced, and humiliated. That insufferable Takada would be loving every second of it.

It just bothered him.

So he got up and went to the gap in the wall. 'Misa? Here's the comb.'

She came and stood there too, and reached for it. He could only see half of her face, but she didn't look ashamed. She looked calm and determined. She looked dignified. He was glad.

'Thank you,' she said.

He nodded. They had both decided, in different directions, and neither of them would back down. They were very different people; always had been, always would be. But maybe that was okay.

*

He still tried again in the morning, though he didn't press it too hard.

'You can stay here,' he said. Her hair didn't shine the way it had on TV, but it was neat, and the black clothes had a suitably solemn air, in spite of the miniskirt and high-heeled boots. He supposed it was all about how you wore them, and that was Misa's area of expertise.

'I'll stay here if you'll confess,' she said, and when he smiled, she did too. 'No. Okay.'

When she passed the comb back, her slim fingers followed it through the gap. He curled his hand over them as best he could. His stomach hurt.

'Good luck,' he said, and he could say it sincerely. 'I hope you get what you want.'

She nodded. She didn't say the same to him, because there wasn't really a good outcome where he was concerned.

The guard came with his meal, and when she left, she took Misa with her.

And though Stephen waited, Misa did not come back.

*

He had that same serenity the morning of his trial. He knew what was going to happen, and it wasn't right, it wasn't just, but it was. So what could you do?

He wondered if Misa really had been a spy all along, and if she'd only left because she believed there was nothing more to learn. He wondered if she'd be there at the trial, looking down at him, unsmiling.

She wasn't.

It was over quickly enough. The executioner was Mikami, and Stephen almost laughed. So Mikami was back in a courtroom again, but doing it his way this time.

As Mikami wrote, with the fanatical light in his eyes that didn't reach the rest of his face, Stephen reflected that he'd never told Misa that name, the true name that had the power of life and death over him. She'd never seen all of him.

The judge held up his pocket watch to count down the seconds. Stephen thought of Misa's small fingers curled around the panel, and how they had been cold, but steady. In his mind, he covered them again with his own.

'Time,' said the judge, as Stephen became aware of the first pain in his chest. So this was what it felt like.

A sliding screen rolling back.

He knew he wouldn't die smiling. People dying of a heart attack never did. But he was going to try.


End file.
